Theos-Talk Archives (September 1995 Message tl00511)

Since reading the exchange yesterday between Rich and Liesel
about change and Theosophy, I've been pondering. Let me
admit up front that there's something about Rich's point of
view that just doesn't sit right with me intuitively. I
perceive a meaning in all the claims about Masters' changeless
eternal wisdom that perhaps he misses in taking it literally.

Those Theosophists (most in the ULT, some in Pasadena and
Adyar) who take literally the idea of a single brotherhood
preserving a single Gnosis/Theosophia/Gupta Vidya would locate
said brotherhood and Gnosis right here on earth. Somewhere, we
know not where, there are underground libraries in caves. If
only we could see the records in them, we'd see that the
Kabbalah, the Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, all
rest on the Single Ancient Occult Tradition that has been
written down in unknown languages and preserved in unknown
places. In those places are works in Senzar that contain all
that the adepts know.

This all too respectable literalism makes Theosophy appear
ridiculous to the scholars of religion who know better than to
believe any such myth. Sure, there may be plenty of unknown
words containing adept wisdom, hidden away somewhere or other,
but that is NOT WHERE THE MASTERS' TRUTH IS LOCATED. And we
look as silly as the Mormons with their Book of Mormon or the
JW's waiting for Armageddon when we talk as if Theosophy is
something stored in a secret place by secretive people whose
existence is dubious. It's not-- Theosophy is in everyone.

The TRUTH is IN US, and those who have been enlightened can
read truth about the divine and the spiritual and the mental
and the emotional and the psychic-- IN THEMSELVES AND OTHERS.
The Bodhisattva is one whose very being is enlightenment.
That's what a Master IS. All the fantasies about a single
truth in a single language preserved by a single brotherhood
are METAPHORICAL for something that is real at a spiritual
level. Such is the conviction I have reached, for what it's
worth.